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The Analyst
He was an analyst first. His doctoral dissertation coined the phrase information economy, and in 1980 he told PBS viewers in a documentary that information tools were the third technology to change the course of civilization, after the plow and the steam engine.
The Collapse
When General Magic's alliance partners lost patience and demanded a product, Porat left the company. General Magic limped on for a few more years and then collapsed. His marriage collapsed too. He had unlimited time and energy in his mind, and he gave it to perfect strangers instead of his wife and children.
Other General Magicians went on to build the iPod, the iPhone, and Android. Porat had no second act in the tech industry. He moved into sustainable building materials and capturing energy from recycling.
How did Porat measure the information economy?
Porat wrote a nine-volume study for the US Department of Commerce, published in 1977, that sorted jobs and industries into those that produce or handle information and those that do not. He estimated that information activities accounted for about 46 percent of US gross national product. By his count, roughly half of the country's labor income came from information work.
Why was information called the third revolution?
Sociologist Daniel Bell argued in his 1973 book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society that economies were moving from making goods toward producing knowledge and services. Futurist Alvin Toffler's 1980 book The Third Wave described a sequence of agricultural, industrial, and information eras. Both books appeared within a few years of Porat's study, which gave the idea a measured base. Toffler's book came out in 1980, the same year as Porat's PBS documentary.
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